Treatise Refuting the View That the Jews Have Altered the Torah

ʻAlī ibn Sulaymān

Late 11th or Early 12th Century

Photo of two sides of an ancient coin, featuring a seven-branched candelabrum and Hebrew lettering.
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This brief text denies the Muslim claim that Jews altered the text of revelation originally provided to Moses, a claim referred to as taḥrīf. It survives in a codex that contains several Karaite philosophical and polemical works, all written in Arabic script. The codex, now held in the British Museum, was owned for a long period by a Karaite synagogue and contains ownership marks in Hebrew characters. ‘Alī ibn Sulaymān cited verses from the Qur’ān in an effort to show that Islamic revelation itself testifies to the Pentateuch’s authenticity, a common line of attack in these kinds of polemics. The charge of taḥrīf appears in many Muslim texts of this period and many Jews responded, regardless of their affiliation within the Jewish community.

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Creator Bio

ʻAlī ibn Sulaymān

Mid-11th Century–Early 12th Century

Born in Jerusalem, Abū ’l-Ḥasan ‘Alī ibn Sulaymān al-Muqaddasī was a scholar active in the thriving Karaite academy there, where he was a student of leading Karaites. He primarily composed works of biblical exegesis and grammar. He left the city before the Crusaders arrived in 1099. Many of ‘Alī’s surviving works are abridgments of earlier Karaite biblical commentaries. His Treatise Refuting the View That the Jews Have Altered the Torah defended Jews from the Muslim criticism of taḥrīf, the assertion that Ezra or other biblical-period figures had altered the written record of divine revelation, namely, the Hebrew Bible. ‘Alī also composed a dictionary called al-Agron (The Collection), based on the Kitāb jāmi‘ al-alfāẓ (The Book of Collection of Words) by David ben Abraham al-Fāsī (tenth century), and a commentary on Genesis.

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